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Railroad Unions Decry Industry Plan to Operate With Fewer Employees

Posted on: Thursday, 2 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By Gregory Richards, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Feb. 2--The country's two largest railroad unions have put aside their differences to jointly decry a plan by the railroad industry to operate trains with fewer employees.

Under the railroads' proposal, part of ongoing contract negotiations with the unions, the positions of engineer and conductor on a train would be collapsed into one. The current contracts came up for renewal on Jan. 1, 2005, but the unions and the railroads have yet to agree on terms.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the United Transportation Union think reducing train crew sizes from two to one through the use of technology would pose a safety risk both to their members and to the general public.

The railroads, including Norfolk-based Norfolk Southern Corp., say that's not true. Instead, they say, safety would be increased, as would efficiency.

"Our goal is to modernize the staffing requirements so we can implement technology that's going to improve the safety of our operations," said Joanna Moorhead, general counsel for the National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents the railroads in the contract negotiations.

Moorhead said it was "blatantly false" that the railroads would do anything to jeopardize the safety of their operations, which have become markedly safer over the past quarter century.

Norfolk Southern referred questions about the issue to the carriers conference.

While the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which represents most engineers, and the United Transportation Union, which represents most conductors, have scrapped in the past over jobs, they announced Monday that they have agreed to disagree with the railroads.

"We're not trying to stifle growth," said Don Hahs, president of the engineers' union, a division of the Teamsters union. "On the other hand, we don't want to kill ourselves to help them make money."

Hahs said having only one person aboard a train would pose too great a risk, given employee fatigue, the chance for an accident or a train malfunction and the need for employees to step away from the train controls to use the bathroom.

The unions and the railroads differ on when smaller crews might be implemented, if at all. The two unions contend that the railroads want to immediately trim crew sizes. The railroads say that one-person crews are years away, however, and then only if the government determines they will be safe.

Norfolk Southern began a two-year trial of its new computerized control system in August on a 141-mile line in South Carolina . The system automatically enforces speed limits and distances between trains to prevent collisions and other train accidents.

The carriers are seeking the authorizing language in the contract now because the contracts will last five to six years, said Peggy Wilhide, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, a railroad trade group based in Washington .

"The carriers will not make any changes in crew size until the technology is implemented, and then it will be on some routes, but not all," Wilhide added.

Wilhide estimated it would cost the country's four biggest railroads, including Norfolk Southern, $2 billion to install the new train controls across their networks. She said she was not sure how much of a savings they would gain by having fewer crew members. According to the association, train crew members for U.S. railroads pocketed $4.75 billion in wages in 2004.

The unions, which continue to negotiate with the railroads separately, say that the railroads have been trying to use past differences between the two labor bodies to drive them apart, such as by offering both of them the chance to represent the possible single-train-operator position.

Moorhead, of the National Carriers Conference Committee, said it has not been the railroads' goal to pit the unions against each other.

The unions are also concerned that having fewer employees in the train cabs will threaten the long-term solvency of the Railroad Retirement System, a retirement pension system for railway workers separate from Social Security.

That should not be an issue, Wilhide said, because the country's largest railroads plan to hire 80,000 workers over the next eight to 10 years.

Reach Gregory Richards at (757) 446-2599 or gregory.richards@pilot online.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

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Source: The Virginian-Pilot

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